r ^ 

SPEECH 

AGAINST  THE   CON- 
SCRIPT ACT 


DELIVERED  BY 

THOS.  E.  WATSON 


AT 

THOMSON,  GA. 
JUNE  23,   1917 


REPRINTED  FROM 
WATSON'S  MAGAZINE 


Jeffersonian  Publishing  Co. 
Thomson,  Ga. 


Speech  Delivered  by  TRos.  iE.gWatson,  at 

Mass  Meeting  iat  TEomson,  Ga., 

June  23,  1917 


FELLOW-CITIZENS : 
As  perhaps  most  of  you  know,  I 
have  had  less  to  do  in  the  calling  to- 
gether of  this  assemblage,  than  with  " 
any  other  meeting  here  in  Thomson, 
that  I  ever  addressed. 

Neither  in  The  Jetfersotiian,  nor  in 
any  other  paper,  within  my  knowledge, 
has  my  name  been  mentioned — and  no 
one  has  been  authorized  to  state  that 
I  would  appear  here,  as  one  of  the 
speakers. 

The  extent  of  my  personal  connec- 
tion with  it,  was  the  assurance  given 
by  me  to  a  committee  of  my  Dearing 
friends,  that,  if  the  people  saw  fit  to 
hold  such  a  meeting,  I,  as  a  citizen, 
a  taxpayer,  and  a  lover  of  my  country, 
would  be  present,  and  give  my  views 
on  the  subject  which  so  profoundly  agi- 
tates the  public  mind. 

In  the  years  gone  by,  we  have  held 
many  a  mass-meeting  in  this  Court- 
Eoom. 

Nearly  thirty  years  ago,  we  started, 
in  this  room,  the  great  fight  on  the 
Jute  Bagging  Trust — a  fight  which 
spread  from  this  coun-ty,  to  other  coun- 
ties throughout  the  State— and  from 
this  Stte  to  other  States,  until  all 
Dixieland  was  in  revolt  against  an  op- 
pressive combination,  which  was  re- 
morselessly victimizing  the  cotton- 
growers  of  the  South ;  and  as  you  well 
remember,  the  movement  which  we 
started,  here  in  this  Court  House, 
finally  brought  that  insolent  Trust  to 
its  knees. 

That  was  nearly  thirty  years  ago: 
many  of  those  who  are  here  today, 
were  not  here  then ;  and  many  of  those 
who  were  here  then,  are  not  here  today, 
nor  will  they  ever  meet  with  us  again, 
in  this  world. 

Man}"  of  you,  like  myself,  have  lived 
out  the  greater  part  of  your  lives  — 


there  are  more  years  behind  you,  than 
there  are  before  you. 

Personally,  I  haA'e  perhaps  less  in- 
terest in  the  recent  acts  of  the  govern- 
ment, than  almost  any  citizen,  for  I  am 
too  old  for  military  service,  have  no 
son  who  comes  within  the  act  of  con- 
scription, and  my  only  grandchildren 
are  little  girls.  Therefore,  long  before 
the  most  of  the  consequences  which  I 
fear,  from  this  new  Congressional  legis- 
lation, can  come  upon  the  country,  my 
dust  will  have  mingled  with  that  of 
my  ancesors,  who,  like  yours,  fought 
and  suffered  and  bled,  to  establish 
those  liberties  that  are  now  endangered. 

All  over  this  country  roundabout — 
on  hill  and  plain,  and  valley,  those 
heroic  forefathers  of  ours  marched — 
hungry,  tattered,  barefooted  —  leaving 
bloody  footprints  to  tell  which  way 
they  marched,  on  their  route  to  the 
battlefields  where  they  won  the  glori- 
ous right  of  independent  self-govern- 
ment. 

Are  we  a  lot  of  degenerates  ? 

Have  we  lost  the  spirit  of  robust 
manhood  ? 

Are  we  such  cowards  that  we  dare 
not  re-assert  our  historic  rights,  and 
demand  that  the  government  respect 
them  ? 

All  over  this  country  you  hear  peo- 
ple say  they  are  afraid  to  speak  out 
against  what  Congress  has  done. 

They  are  afraid  to  sign  a  petition 
for  the  redress  of  grievances. 

In  some  cases,  those  who  have  signed, 
become  frightened,  and  they  send  word 
to  have  their  names  taken  otf. 

They  are  afraid  they  will  be  arrest- 
ed; they're  afraid  they'll  be  put  in  jail. 

They   are  intimidated  by  the  word 

On  the  streets,  in  the  newspaper  of- 
fices, and  on  the  highways,  there's  a 


589154 


new  crop  of  lawyers,  suddenly  born 
into  the  world,  who  are  experts  in  con- 
stitutional law. 

They  went  to  sleep  last  night  with 
their  heads  pillowed  on  the  Code,  and 
they  woke  lip  this  morning  with  their 
brains  saturated  with  the  principles  of 
jurisprudence ! 

These  spring-branch  lawyers,  swarm- 
ing throughout  the  land,  tell  you,  that 
if  you  criticise  Congress,  it's  "Trea- 
son!" 

If  3"ou  abuse  the  President,  it's 
"Treason!" 

If  you  condemn  the  recent  course  of 
the  government — it's  "Treason!" 

Before  I  go  any  further,  let  me  tell 
3^ou,  once  for  all,  that  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States  said  the  last  word 
on  treason,  and  this  supreme  law  of 
the  Republic,  exclusively  defines  what 
treason  is,  and  ever  shall  be,  so  long  as 
that  Supreme  Law  remains  unamend- 
ed by  three-fourths  of  the  States. 

Our  forefathers  did  not  intend  that 
the  barbaric  treason  laws  of  England 
should  ever  become  the  excuse  for  ju- 
dicial murder,  in  this  free  Eepublic. 

They  did  not  intend  that  any  man 
should  be  put  to  death  for  anything  he 
said,  or  anything  he  wrote. 

They  meant  to  bury,  forever,  the 
constructive  treason  of  the  British  stat- 
utes, and  therefore  they  not  only  de- 
fined treason  in  the  Constitution,  but 
they  used  the  word  "only,"  which  in 
that  connection,  weighs  a  ton. 

Congress  has  no  authority  to  abolish 
that  word  "only." 

Congress  has  no  authority  to  modify 
that  definition  of  treason. 

No  act  of  the  President,  no  act  of 
the  two  Houses,  no  decision  of  the  Su- 
preme Court,  no  legislative  action  of 
any  State,  can  enlarge  or  diminish,  the 
constitutional  definition  of  treason. 

Let  me  read  it  to  you : 

"Treason  against  the  United  States 
shall  consist  only  in  leA'^nng  war 
against  them,  or  adhering  to  their  en- 
emies [in  time  of  war],  giving  them  aid 
and  comfort.  No  person  shall  be  con- 
victed of  treason,  unless  on  the  testi- 
mon}^  of  two  witnesses  to  the  same 
overt  act,  or  confession  in  open  court." 

Have  you  been  waging  war  by  open 


acts  of  hostility  against  the  govern- 
ment ? 

Have  you  taken  your  Winchester 
ririe  and  fired  upon  the  State  of 
Georgia  ? 

Have  you  gathered  up  your  six- 
shooter  or  shotgun,  and  gone  on  the 
war-path  against  the  State  of  Tennes- 
see? 

If  so,  you  are  guilty  of  treason. 

Have  you,  since  the  second  day  of 
April,  1917,  openly  aided  and  abetted 
the  German  Kaiser,  by  giving  him  a 
battleship  or  a  submarine,  or  a  cargo 
of  ammunition? 

If  so,  3^ou  are  guilty  of  treason ! 

The  next  time  one  of  these  wet- 
weather  branch  limbs  of  the  law, 
threatens  you  with  arrest  and  impris- 
onment for  treason,  j^ou  shake  your 
finger  in  his  face  and  tell  him  you 
know  what  your  legal  rights  are,  and 
that  you  defy  any  man,  official  or 
otherwise,  to  harm  a  hair  of  your  head, 
until  a  grand  jury  of  your  county  has 
indicted  you,  and  a  petit  jury  has  re- 
turned a  verdict  of  "guilty." 

In  every  city  and  town  the  corpora- 
tion has  its  local  ordinances,  and  in 
every  one  of  these  there  is  an  India- 
rubber  provision  against  disorderly 
conduct.  Under  the  administration  of 
an  arbitrary  mayor,  council  or  police 
court,  it  is  possible  for  almost  any  un- 
usual conduct  to  be  punished  as  "dis- 
orderly." 

But — no  citizen  of  this  Republic  can 
be  tried,  for  any  alleged  crime  against 
the  State,  or  the  Federal  government, 
unless  the  gi'and  jury  indicts,  and  the 
petit  jury  convicts. 

Whenever  you  are  threatened  with 
a  prosecution  for  treason  or  sedition, 
or  any  other  of  these  offenses  that  are 
being  hinted  about,  answer  back:  "I 
demand  indictment  by  the  grand  jury, 
and  am  ready  to  give  bond  for  my  ap- 
pearance to  stand  trial,  if  indicted." 

That  demand  stops  everything  until 
the  grand  inquest,  composed  of  vour 
fellow-citizens,  in  your  own  county  or 
Federal  district,  have  formulated  legal 
charges  against  you. 

Of  course,  if  you  couldn't  give  the 
bond,  you  would  have  to  lie  in  jail, 
awaiting  the  action  of  the  grand  jury. 

Southern  P,.,^phlets 
Rare  Book  CollGcf.i„« 


Is  it  such  a  very  terrible  thing  to  lie 
in  jail? 

Does  the  thought  of  such  a  thing 
turn  your  backbone  into  water? 

Does  your  manly  courage  ooze  out, 
at  the  very  thought  of  having  to  go 
to  jail? 

Better  men  than  you  and  I  have  gone 
to  jail,  and  lain  there  year  in  and  year 
out,  rather  than  budge  an  inch,  before 
the  aggressions  of  tyranny,  or  surren- 
der one  iota  of  conscientious  convic- 
tions and  rights. 

John  Bunyan  was  jflung  into  jail,  and 
he  lay  there  seven  years,  when  he  could 
have  walked  out  any  day,  a  free  man, 
if  he  had  bent  the  knee  to  legalized  op- 
pression. 

Roger  Williams  braved  the  terrors  of 
the  wilderness,  and  made  himself  a 
rude  home  among  the  savages,  rather 
than  abate  one  jot  or  tittle  of  conscien- 
tious conviction. 

John  Wesley  was  hounded,  and  per- 
secuted, and  ostracised  in  his  heroic 
battle  for  what  he  believed  to  be  right. 

Jefferson  Davis  was  arrested,  put  in 
prison,  and  shackled  like  a  common 
criminal. 

Alexander  H.  Stephens  was  arrested 
and  put  in  prison. 

Daniel  O'Connell,  the  Irish  orator, 
statesman  and  liberator,  was  flung  into 
prison. 

The  immortal  heroes  of  the  long, 
hard  struggle  for  the  establishment  of 
those  very  liberties  which  your  govern- 
ment is  lessening  by  arbitrary  Acts  of 
Congress,  were  flung  into  dungeons, 
and  were  led  forth  from  those  dun- 
geons, to  the  fatal  block,  where  the  ex- 
ecutioner of  a  tyrannical  law  struck  off 
their  heads  with  the  axe, 

Algernon  Sidney  and  William  Rus- 
sell are  names  whose  lustre  time 
will  never  dim — ^and  when  we, 
who  inherited  the  liberties  for 
which  they  died,  shall  have  ceased  to 
prize  them  sufficiently  to  run  some  risk 
in  maintaining  them,  our  great  Anglo- 
Saxon  race  will  have  become  basely  de- 
generate, and  we  will  have  proved  our- 
selves unworthy  of  our  birthright. 

Let  us  consider  for  a  moment,  the 
situation  in  which  we  find  ourselves. 


Never  before  were  our  people  so  widely 
and  deeply  agitated. 

Never  before  were  a  people  confront- 
ed with  such  a  complexity  of  troubles, 
so  unexpectedly. 

Just  a  year  ago  your  Representative 
in  Congress  was  facing  you,  as  I  am  do- 
ing now,  and  begging  for  your  votes. 

Not  one  whisper  came  from  him,  to 
put  you  on  notice,  that  when  you  voted 
for  him  in  November,  he  would  vir- 
tually forfeit  the  liberty  and  the  life 
of  your  boy,  before  another  twelve- 
month would  roll  around. 

Let  us  be  fair  to  everybody,  and  let 
us  assume  that  the  candidate  himself 
did  not  dream,  that  when  he  received 
the  benefit  of  your  support,  last  No- 
vember, he  would  break  your  heart, 
with  HIS  vote,  in  Congress,  the  next 
spring. 

Just  a  year  ago,  candidates  for  the 
United  States  Senate  were  abroad  in 
the  land,  asking  for  an  endorsement  of 
their  stewardship,  and  a  renewal  of 
their  commission. 

Not  the  slightest  hint  fell  from  any 
of  these  candidates,  to  put  you  on  no- 
tice, that  if  you  returned  them  to  the 
highest  law-making  body  on  this  earth, 
they  would,  in  less  than  six  months, 
so  violate  your  highest  law,  and  tram- 
ple upon  your  guaranteed  constitu- 
tional rights,  as  to  darken  your  home 
forevermore,  and  bring  down  the  head 
of  your  wife,  under  the  crushing  load 
of  maternal  grief. 

Let  us  be  fair  to  those  Senators,  and 
take  it  for  granted  that  they  them- 
selves, at  that  time,  had  no  idea  of  the 
enormity  that  they  would  commit,  by 
voting  for  conscription  so  soon  after 
re-election. 

This  time  last  year  the  President  of 
the  United  States  was  facing  great  as- 
semblages of  the  people  throughout  the 
country,  and  was  fervently  pleading  for 
peace  against  such  fire-eaters  and  war- 
champions  as  Theodore  Roosevelt, 
Henry  Cabot  Lodge,  and  Charles  E. 
Hughes. 

Those  fervent  appeals  of  the  Presi- 
dent called  forth  the  passionate  appro- 
val of  the  vast  majority,  and  the  wives 
and  mothers  and  sisters  especially,  took 


up  the  slogan,  and  made  the  Republic 
ring  with  it :    "He  kept  us  out  of  war ! " 

That  was  November,  1916  —  where 
then  was  the  Lusitania  ? 

It  la.y  at  the  bottom  of  the  deep  blue 
sea,  where  it  had  lain  since  Mav  5, 
1915. 

Where  were  the  hundred  and  nine- 
teen American  travellers,  Elbert  Hub- 
bard and  his  wife,  young  Vanderbilt, 
and  the  other  husbands  and  wives,  that 
went  down  with  the  ship?  And  the 
little  children,  clinging  in  terror  to  the 
skirts  of  their  mothers'  dresses? 

Their  bones  were  bleaching  on  the 
lonely  seashore  of  the  Irish  coast, 
where  the  unfeeling  waves  had  washed 
them,  nearly  two  years  before ! 

What  about  the  dynamite  outrages? 

They  were  all  in  the  past,  dating  long 
before  the  November  election. 

The  principal  criminals  who  had 
perpetrated  those  dastardly  crimes 
against  our  munition  plants  and  our 
workmen,  had  been  permitted  to  go 
back  to  Germany,  to  receive  the  re- 
wards of  the  Kaiser ;  and  they  had  re- 
turned, with  garments  that  reeked  with 
innocent  American  blood,  on  safe  con- 
ducts granted  by  the  British  govern- 
ment reluctantly,  out  of  respect  for  the 
personal  and  official  request  of  Presi- 
dent Woodrow  Wilson. 

Where  were  the  Belgian  atrocities? 
and  the  barbarisms  inflicted  by  Ger- 
many upon  Northern  France? 

They  all  lay  in  the  past,  the  very 
worst  of  them  having  been  committed 
m  August  and  September,  1914. 

But  let  us  be  fair  to  President  Wil- 
son also,  and  let  us  assume  that  when 
he  accepted  another  term  in  the  high- 
est office  on  earth,  he  did  not  then 
realize  that  in  one  short  month,  after 
he  renewed  his  official  oath,  he  would 
be  plunging  his  country  into  the  blood- 
iest abyss  that  ever  opened  to  swallow 
the  human  race,  and  that  every  cause 
of  war  that  he  now  assigns  as  a  justi- 
fication for  his  complete  reversal  of 
position,  antedates  the  day  he  was  re- 
elected, because  he  "kept  us  out  of 
war." 

Never  before  were  general  conditions 
so  appalling. 

6 


The  human  race  has  never  been  free 
from  inequalities  and  injustice. 

From  the  very  dawn  of  time,  some 
have  been  prosperous  and  some  unfor- 
tunate; some  rich,  and  some  poor — but 
never,  in  all  the  lapse  of  the  ages, 
have  there  been  such  stupendous  in- 
equalities and  injustices  as  now  exist 
between  classes  and  masses  in  this  Re- 
public. 

Never  before  were  such  prodigious 
burdens  of  taxation  laid  upon  the  peo- 
ple, to  be  paid,  not  mainly  by  the  rich, 
but  mainly  by  the  poor. 

Bonded  debts,  to  run  for  thirty  years, 
in  sums  so  immense  they  stagger  the 
human  mind :  one  bill,  for  military  ex- 
penditures, reaching  the  almost  incred- 
ible sum  of  three  thousand  millions  of 
dollars,  and  the  President,  in  addition 
to  that,  insisting  on  another  appropria- 
tion of  six  hundred  and  twenty-five 
millions  of  dollars,  for  airships. 

In  Washington  City  it  is  a  carnival 
of  wild  extravagance :  an  orgy  of  prod- 
igal waste:  a  Bacchanalian  revel  of 
men  who  act  as  though  they  were  drunk 
on  power  ,and  had  lost  every  sense  of 
shame,  duty,  and  responsibility. 

The  expenses  of  the  war  have  been 
so  adjusted  by  the  Senate  Finance 
Committee,  that  they  fall  chiefly  upon 
the  masses. 

The  huge  appropriations  made  will 
accrue  to  the  benefit  of  the  classes. 

Great  is  the  gathering  of  the  vul- 
tures at  the  National  Capital,  for  never 
before  has  there  been  such  a  carcass 
inviting  them  to  the  feast. 

Three  thousand  millions  of  dollars  in 
one  appropriation!  and  the  vultures 
fiercely  shrieking  for  more. 

The  necessaries  of  life  put  further 
and  further  away  from  the  reach  of 
the  common  people,  by  the  lawless  and 
insatiable  combinations  of  Capital. 

The  food  gambler  committing  crimes 
here  in  free  AmxCrica,  almost  equal  to 
those  inflicted  bj'  enraged  victors  upon 
conquered  territories  in  Europe. 

The  necessaries  of  life,  incredible  to 
tell,  higher  in  New  York,  Chicago, 
Boston,  Atlanta,  St.  Louis  and  Balti- 
more, than  they  are  in  London  and 
Paris  and  Brussels. 


It  is  absurd  to  say  we  are  menaced 
by  German  danger. 

German}^  cannot  send  troops  here  in 
submarines. 

Germany  has  no  fleet  on  sea :  Eng- 
land has:  we  have.  In  what  way  does 
she  endanger  us  ? 

The  Law  of  Nations  and  our  own 
common  sense,  tell  us  that  what  Eng- 
land, France,  and  'Germany  do  to  each 
other,  is  none  of  our  business. 

It  is  not  cause  for  us  to  send  a 
million  of  our  boj^s,  to  sacrifice  their 
lives,  so  far  from  home. 

Ten  millions  of  our  young  men  sud- 
denlj^  made  the  helpless  subjects  of  a 
new  duty  to  the  government,  never 
heard  of  in  any  discussion  before  the 
people,  and  never  heard  of  before  in 
the  history  of  the  human  race,  outside 
of  Prussianized  Europe. 

Ten  million  free  American  citizens 
suddenly  and  peremptorily  ordered  to 
quit  their  vocations  and  to  attend  a 
newly-constituted  tribune,  to  be  regis- 
tered like  a  lot  of  dumb  cattle.  To  be 
chatechised  by  an  inquisitorial  process 
recently  invented. 

To  be  compelled,  virtuall}^  to  strip 
their  persons  naked  to  the  eye  of  the 
Federal  inquisitor,  and  threatened  with 
a  sentence  of  a  year  in  jail,  if  they 
hesitate  to  perform  this  new,  unheard 
of  duty,  and  to  submit  their  persons 
to  that  naturally  repugnant  inquisi- 
torial examination. 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  the  country  is 
in  a  state  of  consternation? 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  j^oung  men 
are  terrified,  and  that  fathers  and 
mothers  are  distracted,  half-crazed  by 
natural  fears,  anxieties  and  grief? 

The  jails  are  being  filled,  officers  are 
scouring  the  country,  searching  for 
those  who  did  not  promptly  respond  to 
the  new  law. 

Editors  are  menaced  with  Federal 
prosecutions,  for  daring  to  speak  their 
minds;  the  new  doctrine  is  being  held 
that  the  Constitution  is  suspended  dur- 
ing the  time  of  war,  when  everybody 
ought  to  know  that  the  Constitution  is 
not  suspended,  and  cannot  be,  and  that 
martial  law  does  not  extend  beyond  the 
actual  soldiers  and  the  actual  army, 
unless  martial  law  be  proclaimed  in  the 


different  localities,  in  accordance  with 
the  statutes,  providing  for  just  such 
contingencies. 

In  the  whole  history  of  the  world, 
no  government  ever  demanded  such 
powers  as  this  administration  insists 
upon. 

England  was  in  the  war  with  four 
million  volunteers,  and  for  three  years, 
before  conscription  was  adopted  by 
the  British  Parliament,  as  the  last  re- 
sort to  cope  with  Roman  Catholic  trea- 
son in  Ireland  and  Canada. 

No  food  dictator  was  thought  of  in 
Germany,  until  the  second  year  of  the 
war. 

Australia  gave  her  people  a  vote  on 
conscription,  and  the  Canadian  gov- 
ernment is  even  now  refusing  to  resort 
to  it,  unless  the  people  approve  it,  at 
the  polls. 

But  in  this  country,  before  we  are 
actually  in  any  war;  when  nothing  but 
the  remotest  dangers  can  be  conjured 
up ;  when  no  enemy  is  marching 
against  us ;  when  our  fleet  and  the  Eng- 
lish fleet  are  in  such  absolute  control 
of  the  oceans,  that  not  a  smgle  German 
vessel,  capable  of  bearing  troops,  dares 
to  show  itself  out  of  its  own  harbor — 
we  are  saddled  with  conscription;  we 
are  threatened  with  a  food  dictator- 
ship; we  are  menaced  with  a  national 
price-fixer,  and  we  are  not  yet  secure 
from  the  President's  strenuous  efforts 
to  compel  Congress  to  give  him  the 
right  to  gag  the  newspapers. 

Think  of  it ! 

Who  could  have  dreamed  it,  last  No- 
vember ? 

When  I  recall  how  President  Wilson 
has  clamorously  contended  for  the 
right  to  enslave  the  press,  in  utter  vio- 
lation of  one  of  the  plainest  provisions 
of  our  supreme  law,  it  seems  to  me  I 
can  hear,  as  well  as  see,  in  the  mind's 
eye,  the  brilliant  and  fearless  Irish  ora- 
tor, Eichard  Brinsley  Sheridan,  when 
4ie  stood  forward  in  the  British  Parlia- 
ment to  denounce  the  royal  ministers 
who,  during  the  regency  of  the  Prince 
of  Wales,  were  attempting  to  shackle 
the  press. 

With  eyes  that  blazed  with  indig- 
nant fires,  and  in  tones  that  rang  like 
the  clarion's  call,  he  thrilled  that  au- 


gust  assembly  as  few  orators  have  ever 
done. 

Cried  he:  "Give  them  a  corrupt 
House  of  Lords;  give  them  a  venal 
House  of  Commons;  give  them  a 
tyrannical  Prince;  give  them  a  truck- 
ling court ;  and  give  to  me  but  an  unfet- 
tered press,  I  will  defy  them  to  en- 
croach one  inch  upon  the  liberties  of 
England!" 

Great  God !  How  hard  it  is  to  real- 
ize that  in  one  crisis  of  the  long  fight 
President  Wilson  waged  against  the 
freedom  of  the  press,  a  difference  of 
less  than  half  a  dozen  votes  would 
have  effected  that  high-handed  outrage 
upon  the  Constitution  of  the  Unitod 
States,  and  destroyed  one  of  the  most 
precious  heirlooms  of  American  lib- 
erty. 

Upon  the  pretext  of  waging  war 
against  Prussianism  in  Europe,  the 
purpose  of  Prussianizing  this  country 
has  been  avowed  in  Congress,  with  bru- 
tal frankness,  by  a  spokesman  of  the 
Administration. 

On  the  pretext  of  sending  armies 
to  Euroj)e,  to  crush  militarism  there, 
we  first  enthrone  it  here. 

On  the  pretext  of  carrying  to  all  the 
nations  of  the  world  the  liberties  won 
by  the  heroic  life-blood  of  our  fore- 
fathers, we  first  deprive  our  own  people 
of  liberties  they  inherited  as  a  birth- 
right. 

On  the  pretext  of  unchaining  the  en- 
slaved peoples  of  other  lands,  we  first 
chain  our  own  people  with  preposter- 
ous and  unprecedented  measures,  know- 
ing full  well  that  usurpations  of  power, 
once  submitted  to,  will  never  hereafter 
be  voluntarily  restored  to  the  people. 

Let  us  examine  these  new  acts  of 
Congress,  and  endeavor  to  ascertain 
whether  they  violate  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States  and  the  time-hon- 
ored principles  of  Anglo-Saxon  lib- 
erty: if  they  do,  we  should  be  able  to 
demonstrate  that  fact,  and  if  we  can 
succeed  with  such  a  demonstration,  our 
representatives  in  Congress  should  be 
willing  to  repeal  the  offending  statutes. 

First  of  all,  I  beg  to  remind  you  that 
the  Revolutionary  War  began  with  the 


contention  on  the  part  of  our  fore- 
fathers, that  they  inherited  the  liber- 
ties of  the  Mother  Country. 

Let  us  read  once  more  the  first  of  the 
Resolutions  which  Patrick  Henry  of- 
fered in  the  Virginia  House   of   Bur- 
gesses, in  May,  1765. 
It  reads  as  follows: 

"Resolved,  that  the  first  adventurers 
and  settlers  of  this.  His  Majesty's  Col- 
ony and  Dominion,  brought  with  them 
and  transmitted  to  their  posterity  .  .  . 
all  the  privileges,  franchises,  and 
immunities  that  have,  at  any  time,  been 
held,  enjoyed  and  possessed  by  the  peo- 
ple of  Great  Britain." 

Of  course,  the  immediate  result  of 
Mr.  Henry's  assertion  was  to  make  good 
the  position  against  the  Stamp  Act — to 
wit:  that  it  was  the  right  of  an  Eng- 
lishman not  to  be  taxed,  without  rep- 
resentation. But  the  Resolution  itself 
states  the  broad  truth,  which  was  aft- 
erward embodied  in  many  a  superb  de- 
cision of  our  highest  courts,  namely, 
that  our  forefathers  brought  with  them 
from  England,  the  native,  original  lib- 
erties of  Englishmen,  and  those  liber- 
ties cannot  be  taken  from  him  or  his 
descendants,  without  their  consent. 

Among  the  papers  of  Patrick  Henry, 
found  after  his  death,  was  one  in  which 
he  stated  that  he  wrote  his  Resolutions 
on  the  blank  leaf  of  an  old  law  book, 
without  consulting  with  any  one,  and 
without  the  aid  of  any  one. 

He  said  in  that  solemn  paper, 
which  he  evidently  meant  as  a  dying 
statement,  that  his  Resolutions  pro- 
voked violent  debates,  and  that  many 
threats  were  uttered  against  him,  and 
that  much  abuse  was  cast  upon  him  by 
those  wlio  favored  submission  to  the 
British  Parliament. 

His  Resolution  passed  by  a  very 
small  majority — perhaps  of  one  or  two 
only,  but  he  had  taken  the  legal  posi- 
tion which  was  as  impregnable  as  the 
Rock  of  Gibraltar,  and  the  contagion  of 
Virginia's  example  spread  to  other 
States,  bringing  on  the  Revolutionary 
War,  the  Independence  of  the  new 
Colonies,  and  thus  our  Constitution  of 
1787,  which  was  meant  to  perpetuate 
those  free  English  principles,  on  which 


8 


Patrick  Henry   spoke   with   such  tor- 
rents of  sublime  eloquence. 

(See  Tyler's  Patrick  Henry,  p.  62. 
Also  pp.  75  and  76.) 

As  every  lawyer  who  has  really  stud- 
ied the  principles  of  English  law  is 
well  aware,  the  Great  Charter  of  the 
year  1215,  was  nothing  moi"e  than  a  re- 
affirmance  by  the  Barons,  and  a  re- 
acknowledgement  by  the  Norman  King, 
of  the  ancient  and  original  liberties  of 
our  race. 

The  germs  of  those  principles,  as  of 
all  our  free  institutions,  existed  in  Ger- 
many, before  the  great  Teutonic  tribes 
separated — some  going  to  France,  some 
to  Britain,  some  to  lands  beyond  the 
seas. 

The  peculiar,  original  and  native 
rights  of  Englishmen  were  preserved 
and  handed  down  in  what  was  called 
the  unwritten  law,  the  common  law  of 
England.  Two  of  those  principles  are 
as  clear  as  the  unclouded  sun,  and  as 
old  as  organized  European  society. 

One  is,  that  no  citizen  can  be  sent 
out  of  the  country  unless  he  consents 
to  it. 

Another  is,  that  no  citizen  can  be  de- 
prived of  his  property,  of  his  liberty, 
of  his  life,  without  due  process  of  law. 
Will  any  member  of  the  legal  pro- 
fession challenge  this  statement? 

From  the  shysters  and  the  petty 
place-men  of  the  hour,  arrogant  in  the 
joy  of  a  little  brief  authority,  I  appeal 
to  that  nobler  type  of  lawyer,  who  has 
never  failed  to  make  himself  at  every 
crisis,  the  champion  of  the  people,  the 
unquailing,  unpurchas.able,  unterrified 
advocate  of  those  grand  old  principles 
of  English  law  and  liberty — to  this 
type  of  lawyer  throughout  the  Union 
I  confidently  appeal:  the  type  of  law- 
yer which  put  the  name  of  Samuel 
Romilly  and  Edward  Coke,  and  Henry 
Grattan,  John  Philpot  Curran,  Daniel 
O'Connell,  Henry  Brougham,  Thos. 
Erskine  and  Hugo  Grotius  at  the  very 
forefront  of  human  achievement  and 
glory — I  make  my  appeal  to  that  type 
of  lawyer  which  emblazoned  the  record 
of  our  profession  with  the  names  of 
James  Otis,  Dabney  Carr,  Patrick 
Henry,  Luther  Martin,  Edmund  Ran- 
dolph, George  Wyth^,  and  Thos.  Jef- 


ferson :  to  the  type  which  in  later  days 
gave  us  such  tribunes  as  Alex.  H. 
Stephens,  Benj.  H.  Hill,  and  Robert 
Toombs. 

Let  us  go  back  to  first  principles :  let 
us  take  down  from  the  shelves  those 
standard  old  law  books  which  we  bent 
over  at  midnight  when  we  were  stu- 
dents of  the  law,  many  and  many  long 
years  ago. 

Is  it  not  time  that  we  should  be  ex- 
amining the  foundations  of  our  system 
of  government? 

Is  it  not  time  that  we  were  endeavor- 
ing to  re-mark,  re-establish  and  firmly 
define  the  boundary  lines  of  our  blood- 
bought  liberties? 

Oh,  my  countrymen !  You  who  are 
today  living  in  a  home  that  came  down 
to  you  from  your  fathers:  "you  who 
•  have  been  in  peaceable  possession  all 
your  life,  succeeding  a  father  who  him- 
self had  lived  in  peaceable  possession 
— your  home  is  sacred  to  you,  by  the 
memories  of  your  whole  existence:  by 
dear  associations,  and  by  the  graves 
of  your  ancestors  who  went  to  their 
long  sleep,  believing  that  the  sacred 
old  spot  would  never  be  desecrated  by 
the  feet  of  the  violent,  lawless  tres- 
passer. 

Suppose  you  should  suddenly  awake 
to  the  fact  that  the  trespasser  has  come 
upon  your  inherited  and  sanctified 
premises,  and  was  threatening  to  put 
you  out  by  force  of  arms — how  much 
time  would  you  lose  in  getting  ready 
for  self-protection? 

How  much  time  would  you  lose  in 
hunting  up  your  old  title  deeds,  and 
making  yourself  doubly  sure  of  your 
rights  and  your  land-lines? 

Nationally  speaking,  the  trespasser  is 
on  your  reservation. 

The  lawless  intruder  threatens  to 
drive  you  out. 

Let  us  lose  no  time  in  making  the 
voice  of  the  people  heard.  Let  us 
hasten,  without  the  loss  of  a  day,  to 
examine  our  muniments  of  title. 

I  cannot  believe  that  popular  sov- 
ereignty is  dead. 

I  will  not  believe  that  courage  is  ex- 
tinct in  the  people. 

Until  invincible  facts  convince  me 
otherwise,  I  will  believe  that  you  will 


show  yourselves  men  enough  to  stand 
for  your  rights,  and  to  preserve  those 
liberties  which  your  forefathers  were 
brave  enough  to  win. 

Is  the  English  common  law  a  part 
of  the  law  of  the  United  States? 

Turn  to  that  masterly  and  accepted 
standard,  Cooley's  Constitutional  Lim- 
itations. In  Chapter  III.,  the  learned 
author  first  mentions  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States,  and  the  Consti- 
tutions of  the  verious  States,  and  then 
adds  "But,  besides  this  fundamental 
law,  every  State  has  also  a  body  of 
laws,  prescribing  the  rights,  duties  and 
obligations  of  persons  Avithin  its  juris- 
diction, etc." 

"By  far  the  larger  and  more  valu- 
able portion  of  that  body  of  laws  con- 
sisted of  the  Common  Law  of  England, 
which  had  been  transplanted  in  the 
American  wilderness,  etc." 

Judge  Cooley  then  proceeds  to  de- 
scribe the  Common  Law  of  Engla-nd, 
and  he  says :  "It  was  the  peculiar  ex- 
cellence of  the  Common  Law  of  Eng- 
land that  it  recognized  the  worth  and 
sought  especially  to  protect  the  rights 
and  privileges  of  the  individual  man. 
Its  maxim  did  not  recognize  arbitrary 
power  and  uncontrolled  authority.  The 
humblest  subject  might  shut  the  door 
of  his  cottage,  against  the  king,  and 
defend  from  intrusion  that  privacy 
which  was  as  sacrced  as  the  royal  pre- 
rogatives. 

The  system  was  the  opposite  of  ser- 
vile; its  features  implied  boldness  and 
independence,  self-reliance  on  the  part 
of  the  people." 

Then  Judge  Cooley  speaks  glowingly 
of  how  the  American  Colonists  claimed 
for  themselves  all  the  rights  conferred 
upon  Englishmen  by  the  Common  Law, 
one  of  which  was  that  trials  for  crime 
must  be  by  a  jury  of  the  neighborhood 
in  which  the  alleged  criminal  lived. 
No  punishment  for  crime,  until  after 
indictment  by  the  grand  jury,  and  the 
unanimous  verdict  of  the  twelve  in  the 
box. 

Then  Judge  Cooley  says  that  by  this 
English  Comruon  Law  which  became, 
through  adoption,  the  American  Com- 
mon  Law,   American    risrhts   are   ad- 


judged, and  wrongs  redressed,  in  great 
part  to  this  day. 

Therefore,  no  lawyer  can  deny  that 
the  great  principles  of  the  English 
Common  Law  are  ours  now,  just  as 
they  have  been  the  heritage  of  our  great 
unconquerable  race  ever  since  it  mi- 
grated from  the  forests  of  Germany. 

To  the  same  effect.  Chancellor  Kent, 
in  his  commentaries,  states  in  his  twen- 
ty-first lecture,  that  the  Common  Law 
is  the  apiDlication  of  the  dictates  of 
natural  justice,  and  of  cultivated  rea- 
son to  particular  cases. 

He  quotes  the  language  of  Sir  Mat- 
thew Hale,  who  says  that  the  Common 
Law  is  not  the  product  of  the  wisdom 
of  some  one  man,  or  society  of  men, 
or  any  one  age;  but  of  the  wisdom, 
counsel,  experience  and  observation  of 
many  ages  of  wise  and  observing  men. 

Chancellor  Kent  repeats  the  accepted 
doctrine,  that  the  English  Colonists 
brought  with  them  to  this  country  those 
Common  Law  principles  .which  pecu- 
liarly concern  themselves  with  the  pro- 
tection of  the  individual  citizen  in  his 
personal  liberties  and  rights. 

(Kent's  Commentaries,  Vol.  I.,  Sees. 
469  and  following.) 

Therefore  it  is  established  beyond  all 
question,  that  those  principles  of  the 
Common  Law  which  have  not  been 
specifically  set  aside  by  the  various 
Constitutions,  adopted  by  the  people  in 
this  Republic,  are  today  a  part  of  the 
law  of  the  land. 

Let  me  give  you  an  illustration :  You 
and  I  contracted  statutory  marriages; 
we  went  to  the  Ordinary,  applied  for 
a  license,  delivered  that  license  to  a 
minister  of  the  Gospel,  and  invoked  his 
services  to  perform  the  ceremony  which 
completed  the  statutory  marriage. 

But  for  thousands  of  years,  it  has 
been  the  law  among  our  people,  that 
the  statutory'  marriage  was  not  the  only 
one.  You  could  take  your  loved  one 
by  the  hand,  she  consenting,  and  lead 
her  to  the  presence  of  two  or  three 
friends,  and  you  could  say  to  her:  "I 
take  you  for  my  wife,  for  better  or  for 
worse,  in. sickness  and  in  health,  till 
death  do  us  part." 

And  she  could  say  to  you:  "I  take 
vou  for  mv  husband,  and  I  will  be  true 


10 


to  you  as  long  as  life  shall  last,"  and 
these  simple  declarations,  constituting 
a  civil  contract  between  the  free  man 
and  the  free  woman,  made  a  perfectly 
legal  marriage. 

It  is  so  in  Georgia  at  this  very  day. 

By  the  decision  of  the  highest  court 
in  the  great  State  of  New  York,  it  is 
the  hiw  of  that  imperial  common- 
wealth, at  this  very  hour. 

I  mention  this  simply  as  an  illustra- 
tion of  the  Common  Law,  which  you 
will  not  find  in  any  of  the  codes — State 
or  Federal. 

In  like  manner,  there  are  other  Com- 
mon Law  rights  which  do  not  depend 
upon  written  codes.  One  of  these  Com- 
mon Law  rights  which,  according  to 
Sir  Edward  Coke  and  Sir  William 
Blackstone,  constitute  a  part  of  our 
Common  Law  rights,  is  that  of  abiding 
in  our  own  country,  so  long  as  it  is  our 
pleasure  to  remain  there. 

The  most  tyrannical  king  of  England 
never  had  the  lawful  power  to  send 
a  subject  out  of  the  realm  against  the 
will  of  that  subject. 

The  veriest  plowman  that  ever  wore 
hodden  gray  and  munched  his  crust  of 
dry  bread,  to  satisfy  his  hunger  at  the 
end  of  a  day's  work,  could  stand  firmly 
upon  the  soil  of  Old  England  and  defy 
the  most  tyrannical  king  who  ever  ar- 
rayed himself  in  the  purple  and  fine 
linen  of  royal  office,  and  could  say  to 
that  king :  "It  is  my  right  to  abide  in 
my  native  land." 

No  Act  of  Parliament    could    ever 
banish  the  citizen,  except  as  a  punish- 
ment for  crime,  after  indictment  by  the 
.  grand  jury,  and  the  unanimous  verdict 
of  the  twelve  in  the  box. 

The  soldier  who  voluntarily  enlisted, 
became  of  course  a  soldier  for  all  pur- 
poses, and  he  could  be  sent,  at  the  com- 
mand of  his  superiors,  to  the  uttermost 
ends  of  the  earth,  but  I  challenge  any 
lawyer  in  this  Union  to  controvert  the 
proposition,  that  no  subject  of  Great 
Britain  was  ever  forced  out  of  those 
islands  against  his  will,  prior  to  the 
year  1917.  except  as  a  punishment  for 
crime,  or  because  of  his  voluntary  en- 
listment, or  illegal  kidnapping,  into  the 
Army  and  Navy. 


I  stand  flat-footed  upon  that  asser- 
tion :  I  challenge  contradiction ;  I  defy 
the  historian,  or  the  lawyer,  or  the  pub- 
licist, or  the  arrogant  official,  who  is 
now  cracking  his  whip  over  the  intimi- 
dated American  people. 

I  defy  him  to  show  that  any  such 
outrage  was  ever  perpetrated  upon  the 
men  of  Old  England,  as  now  threatens 
the  young  men  of  this  Republic. 

(See  Blackst  one's  Commentaries, 
Book  1,  Pars.  137-138,  and  the  deci- 
sions cited  in  the  Sharswood  Edition 
of  1877.) 

Another  one  of  these  original  and 
native  rights  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  is, 
that  he  shall  not  be  deprived  of  his 
property,  his  liberty,  or  his  life,  with- 
out due  process  of  law. 

When  that  provision  was  written 
into  Magna  Charta,  700  years  ago,  it 
was  not  a  new  doctrine.  It  was  an  old 
doctrine,  reasserted  by  brave  men  who 
had  swords  in  their  hands,  and  meant 
to  die  as  rebels  against  a  tyrannical 
king  ,if  he  did  not  consent  to  the  resto- 
ration of  that  ancient  birthright  of  all 
Englishmen. 

Those  rebels  who,  with  drawn 
swords,  confronted  their  usurping  king 
at  Runnymede,  in  the  year  1215,  were 
not  clamoring  for  a  novelty,  innova- 
tion, or  revolutionary  change. 

On  the  contrary,  they  unfurled  their 
banners,  erected  the  standard  of  re- 
bellion, and  drew  their  swords  against 
the  king,  to  prevent  a  revolutionary 
change  of  law  which  threatened  to  de- 
stroy the  rights  of  the  individual,  and 
to  give  the  king  unlimited  power  over 
the  property  and  the  persons  of  Eng- 
lishmen. 

Rather  than  submit  to  this,  they 
preferred  to  fight,  and  to  die. 

(See  Cooley's  Constitutional  Limi- 
tations, Chap.  III.  and  notes:  pars. 
311,  314:  209:  430.) 

Has  the  terrible  necessity  come  upon 
us  again  to  learn,  that  in  every  govern- 
ment, the  tendency  of  power  is,  to  en- 
croach ? 

Human  nature  is  just  so  constituted 
that  no  mortal  can  be  safely  trusted 
with  too  much  authority;  he  will 
abuse    it;    the    record    of    the    human 


11 


race  teaches  this  with  a  sadder  empha- 
sis, than  almost  any  other  lesson. 

Patrick  Henry  said,  in  the  times  that 
tried  men's  souls:  "Eternal  vigilance 
is  the  price  of  liberty." 

Herbert  Spencer  said,  that  in  all  re- 
publics, the  existence  of  free  principles 
depended  upon  prompt  and  fearless  re- 
sistance to  the  encroachments  of  those 
who  are  in  power. 

At  this  very  day,  when  weak  citi- 
zens throughout  the  land  are  commit- 
ting suicide,  because  of  the  horrible 
measures  recently  adopted  by  the  Wil- 
son administration,  there  is  an  impera- 
tive demand  upon  the  stronger  men, 
that  they  denounce  these  unlawful  en- 
croachments, and  combat  these  uncon- 
stitutional acts  of  Congress,  by  those 
peaceable  methods,  which  the  wise 
foresight  of  our  ancestors  provided  in 
the  Supreme  Law,  for  that  very  pur- 
pose. 

By  the  original,  native  rights  of  our 
great  white  race,  every  member  of  this 
unconquerable  family  was  safeguarded 
in  his  property,  in  his  liberty,  in  his 
life — until  a  jury  of  his  equals,  after 
hearing  all  the  evidence,  both  ways, 
decided  that  they  were  forfeited. 

The  property  might  be  the  humblest 
little  bit  of  scraggy  land,  with  a  ruined 
hut  upon  it,  as  the  great  Earl  of 
Chatham  said  in  the  British  Parlia- 
ment ;  it  might  be  a  ruinous  tenement 
in  which  the  snow  and  the  rain  could 
beat  and  enter,  but  the  King  of  Eng- 
land could  not  cross  that  threshold, 
without  the  written  authority  of  the 
law. 

The  citizen  who  was  thus  protected 
by  the  primeval  principles  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  law,  might  be  the  very  hum- 
blest, meanest,  most  insignificant  of  all 
human  beings,  but  the  law  was  no  re- 
specter of  persons:  it  drew  no  line  be- 
tween the  palace  and  the  hovel:  it 
thought  no  more  of  Di\5es,  at  the  ban- 
quet board,  than  of  Lazarus,  grovelling 
at  the  gate. 

Great  God !  Must  we  Americans  of 
this  twentieth  century  bid  farewell  to 
those  sacred  principles  of  personal  lib- 
erty, that  were  as  sturdy  as  the  oaks 
in  the  German  forests,  when  Jesus 
Christ,  a  homeless  wanderer  in  Pales- 


tine, was  preaching  his  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  ? 

Have  we  lived  to  see  the  day  when 
the  revered  name  of  Democracy  will 
be  prostituted  to  the  most  terrible 
wrongs  that  were  ever  perpetrated 
against  a  free  people,  whose  inherited, 
priceless,  blood-bought  jewels  of  per- 
sonal rights  were  fondly  believed  to 
be  treasured  forever  in  the  casket  of 
constitutional  law? 

Let  us  consider  for  a  moment  the 
meaning  of  the  words:  "no  man  shall 
be  deprived  of  life,  liberty  or  prop- 
erty, without  due  process  of  law" :  does 
that  mean  by  act  of  the  Legislature,  or 
by  act  of  Congress?  If  so,  it  was  a 
waste  of  time  to  write  them  into  that 
permament  declaration  called  the  Con- 
stitution, which  Congress  was  forbid- 
den to  change,  unless  three- fourths  of 
the  States,  by  legislative  action,  de- 
manded that  change. 

If  there  is  any  principle,  which  no 
competent  lawyer  will  dispute,  it  is  that 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States 
which  the  President  swears  to  support^ 
must  be  supported  as  written,  until 
amended  in  the  manner  which  the  Con- 
stitution itself  prescribes. 

President  Woodrow  Wilson,  on  the 
4th  of  March,  1917,  called  God  and 
the  people  to  witness  that  he  renewed 
his  oath  of  fidelity  to  this  Constitu- 
tion. 

In  that  Constitution  it  is  written  in 
the  plainest  possible  language,  that  no 
citizen  of  this  Kepublic  shall  be  robbed 
of  his  liberty,  coerced  in  his  conduct, 
made  to  serve  against  his  will,  except 
by  due  process  of  law. 

Again  I  appeal  to  all  lawyers  to 
speak  out,  and  tell  the  people  the  mean- 
ing of  those  words. 

Time  and  again  the  highest  authori- 
ties, the  standard  writers,  the  highest 
courts  have  held,  that  an  Act  of  Con- 
gress is  not  due  process  of  law. 

A  statute  passed  by  the  Legislature, 
is  not  due  process  of  law. 

No  man  can  be  deprived  of  his  life, 
by  the  Act  of  the  Legislature.  ^ 

No  man  can  be  robbed  of  his  prop- 
erty, by  Act  of  Congress. 

The  law  of  Eminent  Domain  subjects 
your  property  to  the  service  of  your 


12 


country,  but  the  causes  and  the  methods 
are  jealously  guarded. 

Judge  Cooley  in  Chap,  XI.  of  his 
standard  work,  enters  at  large  upon  the 
discussion  of  what  is  meant  by  the 
phrases  "due  process  of  law,"  and  "the 
law  of  the  land." 

There  never  was  a  time  in  the  history 
of  our  Eepublic,  when  that  chapter  de- 
served more  prayerful  consideration. 

Sir  William  Blackstone  said  that  the 
Great  Charter  of  our  liberties  would 
have  deserved  its  name,  had  it  con- 
tained no  other  provision  than  that  "no 
free  man  shall  be  taken,  or  imprisoned, 
or  disseized,  or  outlawed,  or  banished, 
or  any  ways  destroyed,  nor  will  the 
king  pass  upon  him,  or  commit  him  to 
prison,  unless  by  the  judgment  of  his 
peers,  or  the  law  of  the  land." 

No  free  man  shall  be  taken ! 

Thus  spoke  the  Barons  who  held 
their  gleaming  swords  in  their  hands. 

It  was  seven  hundred  and  two  years 
ago,  this  summer.  They  were  not  pro- 
claiming a  new  principle.  They  were 
resurrecting  an  old  one.  They  were 
calling  upon  it  to  roll  away  the  stone, 
and  to  come  forth  radiant,  with  re- 
newed life,  from  the  sepulchre  in  which 
a  tyrannical  monarch  had  haughtily 
supposed  he  had  buried  it  forever. 

In  this  free  Republic  ten  million  free 
men  have  already  been  taken,  not  by 
due  process  of  law,  but  by  the  arbitrary 
act  of  a  government,  drunk  on  power ! 

No  free  man  shall  be  imprisoned  ! 

And  yet  the  jails  today  are  crowded 
with  free  Americans  whom  no  grand 
jury  has  accused,  and  no  traverse  jury 
convicted. 

No  free  man  shall  be  banished ! 

And  yet,  by  the  living  God,  the  Pres- 
ident of  the  United  States  publicly  de- 
clares that  we  will  banish  millions  of 
American  citizens,  and  send  them  to  die 
on  foreign  fields  of  blood ! 

In  the  name  of  the  Almighty,  what 
spirit  of  evil  has  taken  possession  of 
the  Federal  government? 

How  is  it  that  madness  so  rules  the 
hour  in  Washington? 

Who  can  explain  the  spell  of  terror 
which  has  fallen  upon  the  once  fear- 
less and  independent  people  of  this 
Union  ? 


Judge  Cooley  quotes  the  definition 
laid  down  by  Daniel  Webster  during 
his  argument  in  the  celebrated  Dart- 
mouth College  case:  "by  the  law  of  the 
land,  is  most  clearly  intended  the  gen- 
eral law;  a  law  Avhich  hears,  before  it 
condemns;  which  proceeds  upon  in- 
quiry, and  renders  judgment  only  after 
trial.  The  meaning  is,  that  every  citi- 
zen shall  hold  his  life,  liberty,  prop- 
erty and  immunities  under  the  protec- 
tion of  the  general  rules  which  govern 
society." 

Judge  Cooley  says,  par.  354,  that  a 
legislative  act  is  not  necessarily  the  law 
of  the  land. 

He  says  that  the  words,  "by  the  law 
of  the  land,"  as  used  in  the  Constitu- 
tion, do  not  mean  a  statute,  passed  for 
the  purpose  of  working  the  wrong. 
That  construetion  would  render  the  re- 
striction absolutely  nugatory,  and  turn 
this  part  of  the  Constitution  into  mere 
nonsense.'''' 

The  people  would  be  made  to  say 
to  the  two  Houses  (of  Congress,  of 
course),  "you  shall  be  vested  with  the 
legislative  power  of  the  State,  but,  no 
one  shall  be  disfranchised,  or  deprived 
of  any  of  the  rights  or  privileges  of  a 
citizen,  unless  you  pass  a  statute  for 
that  purpose.  In  other  wordjs,  you 
shall  not  do  the  wrong,  unless  you 
choose  to  do  it!" 

Could  language  be  plainer? 

Could  any  standard  authority  more 
emphatically  deny  the  right  of  Con- 
gress to  confiscate  the  liberties  of  the 
citizen,  by  the  mere  passage  of  a  statute 
to  that  effect? 

Judge  Cooley,  in  his  foot-note  cites 
more  than  a  dozen  decisions  of  the 
highest  courts,  to  the  effect  that  an' Act 
of  Congress,  or  an  Act  of  the  Legisla- 
ture is  not  the  due  process  of  law,  and 
IS  not  the  law  of  the  land,  which  can 
legally  deprive  the  citizen  of  his  prop- 
erty, his  liberty,  or  his  life. 

Paragraph  355,  of  Judge  Cooley's 
book  quotes  the  words  of  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States  in  two  dif- 
ferent decisions,  which  have  never  been 
reversed  or  questioned. 

The  first  quotation  is:  "Due  process 
of  law  undoubtedly  means,  in  the  due 


13 


course  of  legal  proceedings,  according 
to  those  rules  and  forms  which  have 
been  established  for  the  protection  of 
private  rights." 

The  second  quotation  is  as  to  the 
words  from  Magna  Charta.  »'**** 
the  good  sense  of  mankind  has  at  length 
settled  down  to  this, — that  they  were 
intended  to  secure  the  individual  from 
the  arbitrary  exercise  of  the  powers 
of  government,  unrestrained  by  the 
established  principles  of  private  rights 
and  distributive  justice.'' 

(Some  of  the  decisions  cited  are  as 
follows:  MacMillan  v.  Anderson,  95  U. 
S.  37;  Pearson  v.  Yewdal,  95,  U.  S. 
294;  Davidson  v.  New  Orleans,  96,  U. 
S.  97.) 

Judge  Cooley  in  par.  356  superbly 
sums  up  the  gist  of  all  these  decisions, 
saying:  "Due  process  of  law  in  each 
particular  case  means,  such  an  exertfbn 
of  the  powers  of  government  as  the 
settled  maxims  of  law  permit  and  sanc- 
tion, and  under  such  safe-guards  for 
the  protection  of  individual  rights,  as 
those  maxims  prescribe." 

Use  your  native  intelligence,  and  ap- 
ply these  legal  principles  announced  by 
the  highest  authorities,  and  by  the 
highest  court  in  the  world,  and  answer 
me  this  question: 

How  does  the  Conscription  Law, 
rushed  upon  the  people  by  Congress, 
in  i\.pril,  1917,  accord  with  the  time- 
honored  principles  of  Magna  Charta, 
as  embodied  in  the  Bill  of  Rights  of 
every  State,  and  as  crystalized  in  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States? 

If  Congress,  under  the  whip  and 
spur  of  a  President,  can  abolish  the 
Constitutional  guarantees,  which  were 
supposed  to  perpetually  sanctify  your 
personal  liberty,  then  it  logically  and 
necessarily  follows  that  you  hold  your 
property,  and  your  life  at  the  mercy 
of  a  partisan  majority  in  your  National 
Legislature. 

But  there  is  another  clause  of  the 
constitution  which  is  violated  by  the 
conscription  law;  it  is  the  Thirteenth 
Amendment  to  the  Constitution  of  the 
U.  S.,  adopted  in  1865.  _ 

Of  course  the  intention  of  the  gov- 
ernment was,  to  protect  the  negro,  but 


14 


it  would  be  strange  indeed,  if  it  did 
not  equally  protect  the  white  men. 

The  plain  prohibition  of  this  su- 
preme law  is,  that  neither  slaverj'-  nor 
involuntary  servitude  shall  exist  in  the 
U.  S.,  except  as  a  punishment  for  crime, 
after  indictment  by  grand-jury,  and  a 
verdict  of  guilty,  by  the  petit  jury. 

As  everybody  knows,  the  preposi- 
tions "neither"  and  "nor"  are  disjunc- 
tive; they  separate,  instead  of  uniting; 
the  subjects  referred  to;  consequently, 
the  use  of  those  words  prove  that  the 
constitution  means  to  prohibit  any 
form  of  involuntary  servitude,  al- 
though such  servitude  might  not 
amount  to  slavery. 

For  instance:  the  Federal  Courts 
have  punished  white  men  in  various 
parts  of  the  South,  because  those  white 
men  co-erced  negroes  into  working  out 
the  debts  which  those  negroes  had  con- 
tracted. 

You  can't  make  a  negro  plow  for  you 
this  year,  because  he  came  out  in  your 
debt,  on  the  transactions  of  last  year. 

If  you  co-erce  him  in  any  way  to  give 
you  his  labor,  against  his  will,  because 
of  last  year's  debt,  you  are  guilty  of 
peonage.  It  is  not  a  system  of  slavery, 
because  you  certainly  could  not  buy  and 
sell  negroes  under  the  peonage  system. 

But  if  the  negro  is  not  willing  to 
work  out  the  debt,  and  you  exercise  any 
sort  of  duress  over  him,  to  compel  him 
to 'do  it,  it  does  amount  to  involuntary 
servitude. 

Now  let  me  ask  this  plain  question, 
in  the  utmost  good  faith  j 

Has  the  Federal  Government,  since 
the  adoption  of  the  Thirteenth  Amend- 
ment, in  1865,  had  any  lawful  authority 
to  establish  a  system  of  slavery,  or  of 
involuntary  servitude,  except  as  a  pun- 
ishment for  crime? 

Where  is  the  lawyer  who  will  contend 
that  Congress  has  the  authorit}^  to  call 
into  the  service  of  the  government,  a 
million  men  to  construct  post-roads, 
work  upon  the  harbors,  and  the  dock- 
yards; labor  at  the  arsenals,  or  in  the 
"National  Parks? 

Where  is  the  member  of  Congress 
who  would  dare  to  introduce  a  bill, 
compelling  all  young  men  to  register, 
in   order  that  the  government  might 


make  a  selective  draft  of  those  who  are 
needed  to  build  forts  and  ships? 

Yet,  it  must  be  perfectly  clear  to 
every  mind,  that  the  government  has 
just  as  much  right  to  create  a  system 
of  servile  labor,  as  it  has  to  create  a 
system  of  unwilling  service  in  the 
Army. 

The  language  of  the  Supreme  Law  is 
without  limit,  and  without  qualifica- 
tion. 

"Neither  slavery,  nor  involuntary 
servitude  shall  exist  in  the  U.  S." 

Can  any  man  say  that  the  Conscrip- 
tion Acts  do  not  create  a  system  of  in- 
voluntary servitude  ? 

Does  any  man  deny  that  it  was  rail- 
roaded through  Congress  for  that  very 
purpose  ? 

We  read  in  sacred  and  profane  his- 
tory, of  the  imperial  requirements  thai 
the  people  go  up  and  be  numbered,  for 
the  purpose  of  taxation;  but  never  be- 
fore since  written  records  preserved 
the  doings  of  tyrants  in  office,  has  any 
great  nation,  calling  itself  a  free  people, 
and  shielded  from  usurpation  by  a  free 
Constitution,  been  required  to  drop  all 
peaceful  pursuits,  appear  before  otii 
cial  autocrats,  and  register  themselvos 
as  fit  subjects  to  be  sacrificed  to  a  bar- 
baric god  of  war,  in  a  foreign  land. 

My  Countrymen,  I  hold  here  in  my 
hand,  the  published  report  of  James 
Madison,  of  the  secret  proceedings  of 
the  Constitutional  Convention  of  1T87. 
Almost  at  the  beginning  you  see  here, 
on  page  67,  where  it  was  proposed  to 
invest  Congress  with  the  unlimited 
power  to  raise  armies,  just  as  it  was  in- 
vested with  the  unlimited  power  to 
establish  postoffices,  to  coin  money,  to 
establish  rules  of  naturalization,  to 
regulate  commerce,  to  borrow  money, 
and  emit  bills  of  credit. 

I  turn  to  later  pages  in  the  book, 
and  find,  where  long-headed  statesmen 
warned  the  Convention  against  the  in- 
herent danger  of  maintaining  standing 
armies  in  time  of  peace. 

TVe  go  from  page  to  page,  and  we 
notice  how  those  wise  men  deliberated 
upon  the  best  method  of  safe-guarding 
our  liberties  against  the  well  recog- 
nized danger  of  the  standing  Army, 
At  length,  on  page  705,  near  the  close 


of  the  sessions  of  the  Convention,  we 
find  that  our  forefathers  agreed  that 
the  best  way  to  safeguard  democratic 
principles,  and  republican  institutions 
against  the  admitted  and  formidable 
menace  of  the  standing  army,  was  to 
limit  military  appropriations  to  two 
years. 

It  was  argued  that  the  Representa- 
tives would  have  to  return  to  the  people 
every  two  years,  to  give  an  account  of 
themselves,  when  asking  a  re-election, 
and  that  therefore  a  two  year  limit  on 
an  appropriation  to  raise  armies,  would 
forever  secure  our  people  from  the  ad- 
mitted menace  of  the  standing  army  in 
time  of  peace. 

In  Macaulay's  History  we  read  that 
it  was  a  recognized  truism,  "a  funda- 
mental principle  of  political  science, 
that  a  standing  army  and  a  free  Con- 
stitution could  not  exist  together." 

(See  Macaulay's  History  of  England, 
Chapter  XXIII.,  p.  259.) 

In  Hallam's  Constitutional  History, 
we  find  him  quoting  an  English  states- 
man who  was  not  a  democrat,  and  who 
had  no  grievance  against  the  govern- 
ment, as  saying: 

"A  standing  army  .  .  .  are  a  body 
of  men  distinct  from  the  body  of  the 
people;  they  are  governed  by  different 
laws;  blind  obedience  and  entire  sub- 
mission to  the  orders  of  their  command- 
ing officer  is  their  only  principle.  The 
nations  around  us  are  already  enslaved, 
and  they  have  been  enslaved  by  those 
very  means.  By  means  of  standing 
armies,  they  have  every  one  lost  their 
liberties.  It  is  indeed  impossible  that 
the  liberties  of  the  people  can  be  pre- 
served in  any  country,  where  a  numer- 
ous standing  army  is  kept  up." 

(Constitutional  History  of  England, 
page  778.) 

Not  only  has  this  Congress  provided 
for  a  standing  army  of  half  a  million 
men,  but  the  military  appropriations 
made,  by  the  authorization  of  boncis 
and  direct  expenditures  from  the  Treas- 
ury, absolutely  trample  out  of  exis- 
tence the  two  year  safe-guard  so  care- 
fully constructed  by  the  makers  of  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States. 

So  far  as  the  State  Militia  is  con- 
cerned, the   Supreme  Law   leaves  no 


15 


room  for  doubt;  it  cannot  be  legally 
used  by  the  Federal  Government  for 
any  other  purposes  than  those  named 
in  the  Constitution — to  repel  invasion, 
to  suppress  insurrection,  and  to  en- 
force the  laws. 

In  the  Conscription  Acts  therefore, 
a  revolution  is  precipitated  upon  the 
country,  and  what  is  the  reason  alleged 
for  this  overthrow  of  fundamental 
principles — the  headlong  rush  into 
governmental  usurpation? 

If  you  will  carefully  consider  the 
War  Message,  issued  by  the  President, 
you  will  see  that  this  government  is 
plunging  into  the  European  cataclysm 
for  three  purposes: 

First,  to  avenge  the  injuries  in- 
flicted by  Germany  upon  the  United 
States. 

Second,  to  avenge  the  injuries  in- 
flicted by  Germany  upon  certain  Euro- 
pean nations. 

Third,  to  avert  the  menace  to  our 
liberties,  involved  in  German  industry, 
German  commerce,  German  conquest  of 
territory,  and  German  militarism. 

Very  briefly  I  will  say,  that  the 
record  as  presented  by  the  President 
himself,  in  his  War  Message,  discloses 
the  amazing  fact  that  Germany  has 
not  changed  her  attitude  in  the  slight- 
est, nor  inflicted  any  additional  wrong 
upon  us,  since  February  26,  at  which 
time  the  President  went  before  Con- 
gress and  read  a  carefully  prepared 
address  in  which  he  declared  that  our 
position  should  be  that  of  armed  neu- 
trality. 

This  means  of  course,  that  we  should 
have  got  ready  to  repel  any  invasion  of 
our  soil,  and  should  use  our  fleet  to  pro- 
tect our  commerce  upon  the  ocean. 

Just  a  few  days  before  the  President 
renewed  his  oath  of  office,  he  apparently 
had  no  thought  of  sending  vast  armies 
to  Europe,  no  thought  of  interfering 
and  crushing  the  militaj-y  system  of 
Germany,  no  thought  of  employing 
huge  armaments  to  check  the  expansion 
of  German  industry,  commerce  and 
territorial  expansion  of  the  Old  World. 

As  I  have  already  said,  what  was 
writ,  was  writ. 

It  all   preceded  the  President's   as- 


sumption of  the  attitude  of  armed  neu- 
trality. He  was  already  in  possession 
of  the  facts.  He  was  in  possession  of 
Germany's  threat  of  ruthless  enforce- 
ment of  her  blockade. 

Everything  that  he  knows  now,  he 
knew  on  the  26th  day  of  February, 
when  he  took  up  his  position  of  armed 
neutrality. 

In  the  name  of  a  just  God,  what  has 
happened  since,  to  justify  such  a  com- 
plete and  tragic  reversal  of  the  Presi- 
dent's position? 

I  cite  the  highest  standard  on  the 
Law  of  Nations,  Vattel — the  authority 
used  again  and  again  in  Congressional 
debates  by  Daniel  Webster,  Henry 
Clay,  John  C.  Calhoun,  Alex.  H.  Steph- 
ens and  Robt.  Toombs. 

Go  and  read  what  Vattel  says  about 
the  legal  causes  of  war,  and  see  for 
yourself  how  slight  ours  are. 

What  is  the  cause  of  this  war? 

It  resolves  itself  into  this  question: 
What  is  legal  notice  of  a  blockade  ? 

England  has  blockaded  Germany: 
Germany  has  blockaded  England.  The 
blockade  runners  want  to  get  to  these 
two  nations,  for  the  big  money  there 
is  in  it.     (Vattel  335.) 

If  we  have  loaned  money  to  Eng- 
land and  France  to  help  make  war,  we 
have  not  been  neutral.  We  are  still 
doing  it — the  Liberty  Bonds  prove  it. 
J.  P.  Morgan  cleaned  up  ninety  million 
dollars  as  part  of  his  share. 

Vattel  lays  down  as  authority  that, 
if  we  supply  one  warring  nation  with 
what  it  needs,  we  are  not  neutral. 

I  have  contended  all  along  that  we 
have  no  moral  right  to  sell  to  England, 
France  and  Russia:  a  nation  holding 
the  high  moral  attitude  we  do,  should 
not  give  a  man  a  new  pistol,  when  the 
old  one  is  worn  out. 

Germany  didn't  need  guns  nor  food 
— England  needed  both. 

The  men  who  supplied  both  got  rich, 
and  they  want  to  get  richer. 

The  powder  trust,  steel  trust,  auto- 
mobile trust,  beef  trust,  flour  trust, 
shoe  trust,  cloth  trust,  want  to  heap 
up  mountains  of  gold  on  the  blood  of 
our  sons. 

What  is  legal  notice  of  a  blockade? 

I    contend    that    suspected    vessels 


16 


should  be  detained  until  they  can  be 
searched. 

When  that  law  was  framed,  the  sub- 
marines were  not  invented. 

Germany  contends  (and  this  is  not 
sound  law  until  the  Law  of  Nations 
has  been  changed)  that  the  nature  of 
the  submarine  makes  it  impossible  to 
give  a  warning  without  destroying  the 
usefulness  of  the  submarine. 

Germany  gave  due  notice  that  on 
and  after  February  1st,  all  vessels  en- 
tering the  blockaded  zone  would  do  so 
at  their  own  risk. 

Germany  says  a  published  notice  is 
all  that  is  necessary. 

Congressman  Mason  of  Illinois, 
started  to  fight  for  an  amendment  to 
the  conscription  law,  on  June  IT,  in 
the  House  of  Representatives,  to  keep 
your  sons  at  home. 

Meetings  of  protest  are  being  held 
from  Maine  to  California. 

Why  were  not  the  volunteers  per- 
mitted to  go,  under  Roosevelt? 

Let  any  man  go  to  fight,  who  wants 
to  go. 

The  injuries  to  ourselves,  of  whicri 
complaint  is  now  made,  have  been  con- 
doned by  repeated  and  official  assur- 
ances of  continued  friendship,  and  by 
proposals  to  mediate  a  peace  without 
victory  for  any  combatant,  or  humilia- 
tion for  any. 

The  President  said  himself,  that 
peace  could  not  be  permanent  if  any 


of  the  belligerents  were  vanquished  and 
left  with  rankling  memories. 

And  he  also  said  in  his  speech  of 
May  13, 1917,  that  we  are  not  in  the  ^oar 
hecaiise  of  any  'particular  gi'ievance  of 
our  own. 

From  the  Woodrow  Wilson  of  April 
2nd,  I  appeal  to  the  Woodrow  Wilson 
of  December  and  January,  and  say 
without  fear  of  contradiction  from  any 
source,  that  if  the  Woodrow  Wilson  of 
January,  1917,  was  anywhere  in  the 
neighborhood  of  right,  the  Woodrow 
Wilson  of  April  the  2nd,  1917,  was 
nowhere  in  its  vicinity. 

According  to  Vattel's  Law  of  Na- 
tions, and  according  to  principles  laid 
down  by  Chancellor  Kent  in  his  Com- 
mentaries, no  Nation  has  any  right 
whatever  to  interfere  by  force  of  arms, 
with  the  governmental  system  of  an- 
other. 

Neither  has  any  Nation  the  right  to 
avenge  the  wrongs  inflicted  by  some 
other  Nation  upon  one  of  its  neighbors ; 
nor  has  any  Nation  the  right  to  make 
war  upon  a  neighboring  Nation,  be- 
cause of  its  growth  in  power,  unless 
that  growth  is  an  immediate,  urgent 
and  unavoidable  menace  to  the  safety 
of  the  smaller  nation.  * 

(See  Vattel  Law  of  Nations,  pages 
302,  305,  306,  335.) 

Note:  The  foregoing  is  the  gist  of 
the  address,  although  its  length — two 
honrs — teas  too  great  for  us  to  give  it 
in  full  in  this  pamphlet. 


17 


Additional  Fads  for  You  to  Consider 


1st.  That  we  are  proposing  to  give 
Germany  an  all-imder  hold,  by  going 
to  attack  her  at  the  place  which  her 
experts  selected  at  their  leisure  for 
the  purposes  of  defense,  and  which  they 
have  had  three  years  to  fortifj'^  and 
make  impregnable,  so  far  as  military 
art  could  achieve  its  object. 

Is  it  sound  common  sense  and  sound 
military  tactics  to  make  war  upon  the 
enemy  where  we  are  weakest,  and 
farthest  away  from  our  base  of  sup- 
plies and  reinforcements? 

Shall  we  surrender,  voluntarily  to 
the  enemy,  the  vast  advantage  of  mak- 
ing the  fight  on  ground  that  the  enemy 
chooses,  and  fortifies,  and  which  is 
nearest  to  the  enemy's  base  of  supplies 
and  reinforcements  ? 

2nd.  If  we  were  to  spend  the  same 
amount  of  money  in  fortifying  our  own 
country  against  attack,  that  we  are 
now  spending  to  finance  the  fighting  in 
Europe,  would  we  not  thereby  render 
our  own  count r}^  perfectly  safe  from 
attack? 

Does  not  the  loss  of  every  American 
soldier,  killed  in  Europe,  weaken  our 
man-power  for  the  purposes  of  self- 
defense  ? 

Does  not  the  loss  of  every  billion  dol- 
lars, sunk  in  the  European  War,  lessen, 
to  that  extent,  our  money-power  for 
self-defense? 

3rd.  Germany  and  her  allies  can 
draw  soldiers  from  populations  num- 
bering nearly  two  hundred  millions. 

Russia  is  virtually  out  of  the  war, 
and  therefore  the  European  nations 
that  are  fighting  the  German  allies, 
can  only  draw  from  populations  — 
France,  England  and  Italy — number- 
ing about  one  hundred  and  twenty-five 
millions. 

Therefore,  you  see,  at  a  glance,  what 
England  expects  of  us;  in  fact,  Eng- 
land's expectation  has  been  expressed 
in  the  British  Parliament,  during  the 
last  few  days,  by  Sir  Edward  Carson, 
a  member  of  the  government: 


England  expects  us  to  make  good 
what  she  lost  when  Eussia  drew  out 
of  the  war;  consequentyl.  our  govern- 
ment has  assumed  the  tremendous  bur- 
den of  putting  at  least  four  or  five  mil- 
lions of  our  best  young  men  on  the  Eu- 
ropean battle-lines,  with  the  certainty 
that  at  least  one  million  of  these  Amer- 
ican soldiers  will  be  killed  ever}^  year, 
as  long  as  the  war  shall  last. 

Are  5^ou  prepared  for  that  stupen- 
dous sacrifice  of  the  best  soldiers  that 
our  country  can  produce? 

4th.  When  the  government  demands 
of  the  people,  within  six  months  of  the 
time  war  was  declared,  such  colossal 
outlays  as  seventeen  billions  of  dollars, 
and  two  millions  of  men,  the  reasons 
actuating  the  government  should  be 
made  so  plain,  that  the  simplest  mind 
will  understand. 

Has  that  been  done? 

The  latest  declaration  upon  the  sub- 
ject, from  official  sources,  is  that  made 
by  the  Hon.  Robt.  Lansing,  Secretary 
of  State,  and  we  must  assume  that  he 
speaks  by  authority  of  the  President. 

Mr.  Lansing,  in  his  address  to  the 
sixteen  hundred  officers  in  Xew  York, 
a  few  days  ago.  contradicts  what  the 
President  said  in  his  Red  Cross  ad- 
dress, contradicts  what  Secretary  Lane 
said,  in  his  speech  to  the  assembled 
workers  of  his  department,  and  contra- 
dicts what  Secretary  McAdoo  said  in 
his  talk  to  the  bankers  and  business 
men,  at  Des  Moines,  Iowa. 

Mr.  Lansing  discards  all  the  previous 
statements,  that  we  are  in  the  war  for 
an  ideal,  and  to  make  the  world  "sale 
for  democracy."  He  no  longer  makes 
the  astounding  assertion  that  our  Gov- 
ernment was  created  for  world-wide  ag- 
gressiveness, in  the  interest  of  world- 
Avide  democratic  institutions. 

Mr.  Lansing  no  longer  makes  the 
amazing  assertion,  that  we  are  not  in 
the  war  because  of  any  special  griev- 
ance of  our  own;  on  the  contrary,  he 
now  says  to  the  young  officers  who  have 


volunteered  to  sacrifice  their  lives  m 
Europe,  that  they  are  g'oing  across  the 
ocean,  to  do  battle  against  Germany,  in 
order  that  our  own  future  may  be  safe 
from  German  attack. 

If  you  will  think  the  facts  over,  it 
will  occur  at  once  to  your  mind,  that 
never  before  in  the  history  of  man- 
kind, did  any  nation  involve  itself  in 
such  prodigious  sacrifices  of  treasure 
and  of  blood,  to  ward  off  what  is  now 
admitted  to  be,  by  the  Secretary  of 
State,  a  danger — not  to  our  present,  but 
to  our  future,  and  therefore  imaginary, 
instead  of  actual. 

With  a  wave  of  his  hand,  the  Secre- 
tary of  State  puts  aside  the  contention 
that  we  have  set  out  to  repel  an  attack 
which  Germany  has  already  made  upon 
us. 

With  a  wave  of  his  hand,  Secretary 
Lansing  disposes  of  the  silly  contention 
that  we  have  been  attacked. 

He  abandons  all  the  former  pretenses 
made  by  Mr.  Lane,  made  by  Mr.  Mo- 
Adoo,  and  made  by  Mr.  Wilson,  and  he 
now  says  that  we  are  not  fighting  on 
account  of  anything  that  Germany  has 
done  in  the  past,  or  is  now  doing,  in 
the  present,  but  on  account  of  some- 
thing Germany  may  do,  in  the  future. 

Great  God !  What  are  we  to  think 
of  our  head  men  at  Washington,  when 
none  of  them  agrees  with  any  other, 
as  to  the  true  cause  of  the  war,  and 
when  such  prodigious  outlays  of  money 
and  men  have  already  been  pledged  to 
this  preposterous  undertaking, 

5th.  Is  it  worth  while  to  remind 
the  world  that  the  Law  of  Nations  and 
of  God  are  against  us,  when  we  make 
war  without  having  a  just  cause? 

Is  it  worth  while  to  remind  our  pub- 
lic servants  in  Washington  City,  that 
they  are  the  sworn  subjects  of  the  Con- 
stitution of  the  United  States,  and  that 
this  Constitution  does  not  authorize, 
or  contemplate  any  other  kind  of  war, 
except  one  of  self-defense,  when  our 
country  is  being  invaded  hj  armed 
foes,  or  when  domestic  insurrection  anil 
concerted  resistance  to  the  laws  of  the 
United  States  threaten  the  existence  of 
the  Government. 


Gth.  In  preparing  for  this  European 
adventure,  the  Federal  Government  has 
already  created  a  huge  standing  army 
of  enlisted  men,  numbering  800,000: 
that  regular  army  is  to  be  kept  in  this 
country. 

What  for? 

Already  the  Executive  branch  of  the 
Government  has  swallowed  the  Legis- 
lative, and  the  President  has  demand- 
ed and  secured  more  personal  power 
than  any  Kaiser  ever  possessed. 

What  for? 

Not  only  has  Kaiser  Wilson  made 
himself  absolute  Dictator  of  Congress 
and  the  Army,  but  he  has  established  a 
dictatorship  over  the  staff-of-life  of 
100,000,000  people. 

What  for? 

Already  there  has  been  created  at 
Washington  a  government  by  auto- 
cratic Bureaus,  fully  as  arbitrary  and 
autocratic  as  any  that  ever  existed  in 
Russia  or  Germany. 

What  for? 

Already,  the  people  are  suffering 
from  the  insolent  intimidations  of 
spies,  deputy  marshals,  postmasters,  re- 
cruiting officers,  and  District  Attor- 
neys? 

What  for? 

Already,  the  Government  has  cre- 
ated a  machiner}^  for  the  utter  destruc- 
tion of  free  speech,  free  press,  peace- 
able assemblage,  and  of  the  legitimate 
agitation  of  righteous  discontent. 

What  for  ? 

7th.  Study  conditions  carefully  and 
ask  yourself  whether  it  does  not  seem 
to  be  the  fixed  purpose  of  the  Federal 
Government  to  obliterate  the  States, 
abolish  the  Militia,  destroy  our  Con- 
stitutional guarantees,  and  to  estab- 
lish a  militar}^  despotism  for  the  benefit 
of  the  Aristocrats  of  Special  Privilege. 

The  classes  need  a  huge  Standing 
Army,  to  overawe  the  oppressed 
masses,  and  to  compel  the  mute  sub- 
mission of  the  victimized  producers, 
while  they  are  being  inhumanly  ])lun- 
dered  and  oppressed  by  the  insatiable 
beneficiaries  of  class-legislation. 


19 


ID  YOU  KNOW  that,  in  England- 

The  Roman  Catholic  Hierarchy  sup- 
pressed the  book  which  informed  the  people 
of  the  lewd,  obscene  questions  which  bachelor 
priests  put  to  women  in  the  privacy  of  the  Confes- 
sional Box? 

They  are  now  trying  to  repeat  the  process  in  the 
State  of  Georgia,  by  PROSECUTING  THOS.  E. 
WATSON. 

You  can  see  for  yourself  what  those  questions 
are  by  purchasing  a  copy  of  Watson's  work. 

The  Roman  Catholic 


Hierarchy 


The  book  is  beautifully  printed,  on  good  paper, 
is  illustrated  with  many  pictures,  is  bound  substan- 
tially in  thick  paper,  and  will  tell  you  many  things  of 
the  papacy  which  you  don't  know,  and  should  know. 

Price,  prepaid,  =  =  =  =  =  $1.00 
Six  copies,  one  order,  =  =  5.00 
A  dozen  copies,  one  order,    =     9.00 

Address 

JEFFERSONIAN   PUBLISHING   COMPANY 
Thomson,  -  Georgia 


